Hotel.de – End of Own Star Rating System

Online rating portals enjoy great popularity, particularly with regard to hotels. Who has not already checked how well or poorly the hotel being considered for the next holiday performs. But is it permitted for rating portals to carry out the ratings themselves? The Higher Regional Court (OLG) Nuremberg says no.

For a long time, the well-known hotel booking portal Hotel.de used its own star rating system. The ratings were carried out on the basis of a self-assessment by the hotel as well as customer experience from Hotel.de itself. However, no objective classification system was used.

An informative notice that the classification had been carried out by the website operator itself only appeared when the user triggered a corresponding display with the mouse pointer.

The Wettbewerbszentrale considers this to be misleading and objected to the advertising with the star symbols.

The Wettbewerbszentrale was successful in its lawsuit at first instance. The booking portal appealed against the judgment.

The court's decision

By judgment of 19.04.2016 – Az. 3 U 1974/15 the OLG Nuremberg dismissed the appeal and thus confirmed the first instance judgment.

The Nuremberg judges justified their decision on the grounds that the addressee of the advertisement assumes that the stars are based on an official classification by a neutral classification body. A rating procedure for the standard of a hotel must be carried out using an objective examination procedure by a neutral, impartial body that is guided by transparent criteria in order to avoid misleading the relevant sectors of the public.

Hotel.de is not a neutral body, as it has corresponding contractual relationships with the respective hotels. Furthermore, the rating criteria are not transparent and objectively verifiable.

Even the clarifying notice regarding the rating system would not prevent misleading, as it is not guaranteed that the internet user will actually notice the notice. The so-called mouseover function is insufficient for this purpose.

Conclusion

The Wettbewerbszentrale was thus also successful in the second instance. Booking portals may therefore not advertise their own star ratings for hotels – at least not with only a hidden clarifying notice.